Duck Tales
by Nade-Naberrie
Summary: "Ducks. The child is bordering on hysteria over a flock of city-dwelling puddle ducks." Let it never be said that Erik wouldn't do anything for his little protégé. Possibly the fluffiest ficlet you'll ever read. Sweet, innocent E/C in the early years. Oneshot. NOT in response to a tumblr post, haha.


**A/N: Hey guys! Up for some fluffy silliness to break up your Tuesday? Look no further.  
**

 **I'm not gonna name names, y'all (*side eyes HC247 pretty hard but doesn't name names*), but when certain people post DARK AND DEADLY responses to tumblr prompts which TRAUMATIZE their poor heartbroken readers (I kid, she beta-read this thing, I mean I don't forgive you but...), sometimes you need to follow up with some fluffy goodness. Amidst all these tumblr prompts, where are the nice ones about tulip fields and sunshine and duckies?! Huh?!**

 **Well... here you go. Pure, innocent, cotton candy fluff, E/C style.**

 **As an aside, Christine is supposed to be about twelve, here.**

* * *

"Angel!" the child wailed, running beneath the stone archway with her cloak billowing out behind her. I scrambled to my feet at the distressed cry, cursing the wall that separated us. Worried into recklessness, I risked exposure long enough to peer through the stained glass window above her head. I watched as she buckled to her knees before the little altar, rosy cheeked and sobbing. Her lower lip quavered as she sucked in tight gasps of air. "Angel, please, I need help!"

"I'm here, child," I assured her, pitching my voice so it seemed as though the stones themselves reverberated with the sound. "Are you hurt?"

The question only made her sob all the harder. "No! No, it's not me, _mon ange_ , it's Louis!"

My brain worked furiously to process her words: _she's fine, she's fine, she hasn't been harmed… Louis? The baker on the Boulevard des Capucines? The stableboy? The former bloody king of France?_

"We tried to h—" The girl spluttered and choked, then made a wheezing, gurgling whine as she attempted to breathe against a closed throat.

"Breathe, Christine," I instructed, employing the corrective tone I used in her lessons. "I cannot help you until you breathe. Open your ribcage, draw your shoulders back. Relax your jaw and your tongue. Now, from your diaphragm: _in_ -two-three, _out_ -two-three. Again."

I made her repeat the exercise five times, until her panicked wheezing settled into deep, controlled breaths.

"Good. Now, slowly and concisely, tell me what has upset you."

The poor little thing was trying valiantly to rein in her emotion; her mittened hands were balled and trembling at her sides. "M-Meg and I like to go to the pond on Sunday aftern-noons to f-feed the ducks," she explained, trying her best to continue the breathing pattern even as her voice wavered and cracked.

"At the Jardin des Tuileries," I said gently. "I remember."

She nodded. "We didn't pl-lan to go today because it's been so fr-frightfully cold, but the pond is nearly frozen solid and the ducks won't have anything to eat, so we just _had_ to go, and when we—"

"Breathe," I reminded her.

She took a ragged breath, and continued with a fresh stream of tears rolling down her cheeks, "They usually come str-raight over. We bring their f-favorite treats, so they always rem-member us. They like pea pods and celery t-tops and carrot peels, and today we even brought a bit of strawberry tart. Louis likes his sweets better than any of them, so when he didn't come straight away we _knew_ something was wrong!"

I blinked, trying to keep pace with her rapid-fire storytelling. "And… Louis is…"

"One of our ducks!" Christine cried. "He is very distinctive, Angel, we'd know him anywhere! He's all white with an orange beak, and one of his tail feathers juts out to the side. The white one _without_ the strange tail feather is Odette!"

I put a fist to my mouth until I was certain I could speak without a smile in my voice. "Of course."

 _Ducks. The child is bordering on hysteria over a flock of city-dwelling puddle ducks._

Christine whimpered, wiping a mittened hand over her eyes and nose. "Meg said we should l-look for him, so we went all the way ar-round the pond, calling for him. And we—" She heaved a sob, her sweet little voice strained into a squeak. "We found him trapped in the ice, _mon ange_! He's stuck and he can't move! I held Meg's feet and she tried to slide out to him on her belly, but her _Maman_ came running over to us when she saw. She made us stop and gave us each ten raps with her cane."

I saw red for a moment. I appreciated the need for discipline, but Antoinette knew better than to strike my protégé. She would be receiving a personal visit to discuss that particular blunder, no matter how good the intentions.

"She s-said he's just a duck and we should let nature take its c-course. But Louis is our _friend!_ We can't just leave him there to die!"

Personally, I was inclined to agree with Giry on the matter. It was Darwinism, plain and simple: any bird lacking the basic instinct to vacate the water before its feet froze was probably not long for this world. Still, I heard the desperate pain in the girl's voice, and remembered a time not so very long ago when the death of a little golden spaniel had torn my world off its axis. Compassion for human beings frequently eluded me; compassion for animals, on the other hand, I could inherently understand.

Even, I supposed, a half-brained puddle duck.

"I'll do what I can," I promised Christine, and left her smiling in the candlelight.

* * *

I knocked relentlessly for nearly two minutes before the deadbolt clicked and the chain slid open. A moment later, a bleary brown eye appeared through the crack between the door and its frame.

"Monsieur Erik," the servant's voice said flatly, offering a sour smile that did nothing to hide his disdain. "I'm afraid you've called too late. The master is already abed."

"Don't bother," grumbled a weary voice behind him. "He knows I couldn't very well sleep through that racket. Let him in, Darius."

Flashing the servant a tight, equally insincere smile, I shouldered past him into the flat.

The Daroga stood in the middle of the parlor, dressed in a sleeping gown, his short salt-and-pepper hair ruffled and sticking out in tufts. Pillow lines were imprinted across his face, which only accentuated the glower he'd fixed upon me.

"Do you have a blowtorch?" I asked without preamble.

Squinting in the dim light, he blinked vacantly a few times before glancing at the clock on the mantle. "Erik, it's after midnight."

"Correct. That gives us approximately eight hours and twelve minutes before sunrise. I imagine that should be more than adequate for the task at hand."

" _Us?_ Gives _us_ adequate time to do what, exactly?"

I sighed. "Extract a duck from a frozen pond."

"… a duck."

"Yes."

"As in waterfowl?"

"Yes."

The Daroga opened and closed his mouth, then rubbed a hand over his eyes and turned to walk back toward his bedroom. "Good night, Erik."

"What about a pickaxe?" I called after him, unconcerned with his dismissal. "Or a bone saw?"

The door to his bedroom slammed shut.

Shrugging, I turned and let myself into the kitchen. Through his silence, I could only presume he meant to grant me full permission to search his residence for the appropriate tools. The Daroga was nothing if not a gracious host.

* * *

"This whole affair," I explained to the duck half an hour later, as I hacked repeatedly at the ice around him with a chef's knife, "Would have gone much easier had the Daroga possessed a simple blowtorch. His toolkit is _abysmal_. I can't begin to imagine how he functions on a day-to-day basis." I paused to catch my breath, each puff materializing in a shimmering white cloud as it fleeted between my lips. I flexed my cramping right hand and switched the knife over to the left; being ambidextrous occasionally had its advantages.

"You might be wondering why I did not bring the tools from my own laboratory. A severe oversight, I'm afraid. Naturally, the thought did occur to me, but, you see, my toolbox is unduly heavy because it is appropriately _stocked_. I thought surely the Daroga would have an appropriate instrument for the task. I shan't make that mistake again, I assure you. Although you'd do us both a great service if you'd remember to—" I made a grunt of effort as I stabbed into a particularly stubborn piece of ice "—MMPFH— vacate the pond before it freezes over next year."

The duck lay quiet and unresisting, barely ruffling its feathers at the violent invasion into its environment. I continued to talk to it in a gentle, conversational tone under the pretense of keeping it calm, though truly it was my own nerves that needed steadying. Without swift intervention, this creature would be dead within the hour. I had not promised Christine that I would save him, only that I would do my best – but to a child who considered me an Angel, omniscient and all-powerful, there could be no denying that her expectation was a full recovery for her feathered friend.

I worked faster, ripping at the ice with deep, savage thrusts, cutting as close to the duck as I could without severing its feet. Another ten minutes, and I pulled him free. The ice had frozen to the underside of his belly and still encircled his legs, but I didn't dare try to cut so close to the flesh, especially with increasingly tired, shaky hands. Wrapping the little fellow in my scarf, I tucked him under my arm and slid carefully back on my hands and knees to the edge of the pond.

I didn't bother to knock on the Daroga's door a second time.

The charcoals were still smoldering beneath the Samovar even at this late hour, thanks to the Persian's bedtime tea habit. I set to work immediately, filling a large ceramic bowl with the boiling water, then pouring it into the bathtub. After three trips, I opened the tap to bring in cold water, and gradually swirled it by hand to mix. When I was satisfied with the temperature, I carefully unwrapped the duck from my scarf and set him in the warm bath.

In hardly any time at all, the ice encapsulating his legs melted away, and I felt a tiny thrill of hope when I saw his webbed orange feet begin to twitch instinctively in an attempt to paddle. I murmured low, quiet words of encouragement, scooping up warm water in a cupped hand and gently trickling it over the bird's head, neck and wings. At first he barely stirred, but after several agonized minutes of stimulation and coaxing, at last he opened his eyes and gave a shudder, ruffling his downy white feathers.

"That's it," I soothed. "There's a good lad."

"What – on – earth – is going on here?" exclaimed the Daroga behind me, giving me a start. It had been a very long time since anyone had been able to sneak up on me.

Arching an eyebrow at him over my shoulder, I deadpanned, "Oh, I'm sorry, how terribly rude of me. Nadir, this is Louis. Louis, Nadir."

"You actually—" He shook his head as if to clear it, his mouth hanging slightly open. "You literally meant a duck. A live duck."

"I always mean exactly what I say," I answered tetchily.

For a moment the Daroga looked from the duck to me and back again, evidently struck speechless. At last, he managed to squeak out, an octave too high, "Well, what is it doing in my bathtub?!"

"Warming up. Quite effectively, I might add! Oh, you'll need to have Darius refill the Samovar, by the way. We used up nearly all of the hot water."

"You used the hot water from the Samovar," he repeated slowly, like a particularly dull child, "To warm a duck. In my bathtub."

"Correct."

"At… one o'clock in the morning."

I flicked open my pocketwatch, then shrugged. "Quarter after, actually."

The Daroga stared at me in open disbelief for another few seconds before tilting his head back and erupting in a deep, boisterous belly-laugh. His whole body shook with mirth until his face was purple and the veins stood out in his neck and temples, until tears were streaming down his cheeks and he was nearly shrieking for air in between guffaws.

Disturbed by the commotion, Louis arched his neck and flapped his wings a few times, scattering droplets of water all over me.

Nadir collapsed against the doorframe then, laughing so hard he couldn't hold himself upright.

"This is—" He wheezed. "You just—" He put a hand to his throat, choking on his own spittle. "I don't—"

I feigned annoyance for a little while, but even I had to crack a smile eventually.

"Yes, yes, it's all terribly amusing. Now pull yourself together and go make yourself useful. Do you have any vegetable scraps left over from supper?"

"Why?" The Daroga pushed himself upright again, still giggling like a schoolboy. "Are we to make stock out of him?"

"You think I'd go to all this trouble to rescue the poor fellow just to put him in a stew?"

"To be honest, Erik, I haven't the faintest idea what to think any more."

 _What else is new?_ I thought. Out loud, I said, "Vegetable scraps: carrot peels, celery tops, anything of that nature."

"I'll see what I have."

He came back a moment later holding a burlap sack of vegetable trimmings intended for the stockpot. He handed it over, and I skimmed a few of the freshest scraps off the top and tossed them into the bath water. Louis swam over to them and pecked at the trimmings listlessly for a moment before turning away, uninterested.

"Are you certain this is what ducks eat?" the Daroga asked, frowning.

A memory stirred, and I lifted a finger, tapping it thoughtfully against my thumb. "Perhaps not this particular duck," I said. I rose to my feet and went out into the parlor, returning a moment later with my hands full of baklava.

When I offered Louis a piece of the sweet, flaky pastry, he gobbled it up instantly.

I grinned.

"A sweet tooth indeed," I murmured, handing half the baklava to Nadir. We took turns tossing the duck one piece at a time, and soon enough he'd polished off the entire tray.

* * *

"I knew you would save him!" Christine trilled, practically skipping into our lesson the following night. "I knew it, I knew it!" She beamed so brightly that the dimples showed in her chin.

"It was my pleasure, Mademoiselle," I told her, my voice colored with unmistakable affection.

"Meg said it was a miracle. _I_ told her Louis must have a guardian angel."

"Very clever."

She tilted her head coquettishly, giggling, then let out a contented sigh. "Thank you, _mon ange_. You are my hero."

And though I was sleep-deprived, frost-bitten, and had incurred a truly nefarious reputation amongst the Daroga's servants, I found I could not wipe the smile from my face for the remainder of the day.

* * *

 **A/N: Fluffiest thing you ever read? (Er, phluffiest?) Haha. Hope you enjoyed. :) Please drop a review if you did!**


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